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Mapping Keywords to Content for Maximum Impact - Whiteboard Friday

When keyword targeting is approached separately from a content creation strategy, the concocted results can often leave us scratching our heads and pointing fingers at the malformed "Frankenpages." By fostering a more cohesive relationship between these traditionally detached endeavors, we can greatly enhance our results and deliver considerable value to our audience.

This week Rand shows us how we can move past conventional keyword targeting practices and generate web pages that won't leave us "running for the hills."

Video Transcription

Howdy SEOmoz fans! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Thrilled to have you with us. Today we're talking about mapping keywords to content for maximum impact.

Now the problem is that a lot of folks think about the world of keyword research and keyword targeting separately from the worlds of content creation. This can happen a lot of the times because the SEO person is not always involved in the design of the content strategy or what's going to go on the website. They're brought in after the fact, maybe in an internal role or in an external consulting role. That can be super frustrating. Let me show you, give you an example of, sort of the traditional keyword targeting process and why this is so bad.

So here's Mr. Biz Owner, and he would like to rank well for oven mitts. A perfectly reasonable request, want to rank for oven mitts. Great. All right. So the SEO person is brought in, and the SEO person goes, "Well, you know, I want to be able to make some changes. I need to add some content to your website." The business owner is like, "No, no, no, no, no. I already have a page. I just want it to rank for oven mitts." Well, okay. Let's chose the best page you've got for oven mitts and we'll try to make that one rank better. The business owner is like, "All right. All right. Good job. Good job. I appreciate that. You did good work. Now I want to rank well for heat retardant oven mitts." The SEO is like, "Well, okay. You know what? We can modify that page again and target that particular phrase."

But this cycle goes on and on and on. Soon enough you'll have Frankenpage, ooh, super scary. He's trying to target ridiculous terms like "advanced kid- friendly oven mitts for hardcore baked lentils." You're like, "How did this happen? How did this Frankenpage get here?"

Well, it got there because of this process, this broken process of the SEO not being the person with the authority or the influence to be able to choose what content needs to be existing on the website and what content needs to be targeting which keywords. This happens all over the Web. You can click on tons of search results in all sorts of verticals and sort of be like, "What were they thinking when they made this page?" It's not that the website is all that bad or they have done something terrible in SEO. It's just that it is not strategic. It is a very tactical approach to SEO, and that tends to lose out over time to pages that are built specifically for users searching for those things that deliver everything they want in the content.

So, let's talk about a strategy to do exactly that. Over here we have a better process. No Frankenpages.

Step one: Establish the full list of keywords. Rather than going sort of one by one and saying, oh, we want to target this, we want to target that, it's nice to be able to start with that full list of keywords. As you refine, if you need to refine that keyword list, beginning again with this process and making sure that the new keywords that you need to be targeting work into the process in this way. We've got our full list of keywords to target. Hopefully, we've figured out how valuable and important they are so we have our spreadsheet. We say, "Well, these are the top converting keywords. These are the ones that send the most traffic, and these are the ones with the lowest difficulty. So based on those three factors, this is how we want to target them." Then we'll map the keywords to existing content based on their relevance. So this means does the page's content actually serve the needs of a keyword phrase that they are targeting? So, if you have a heat-retardant oven mitts page, does that actually contain heat-retardant oven mitts? Is that a full category page? Is it a subcategory page? Is it a single item that happens to be the most heat- retardant oven mitts? Is it a brand page? What is it? We make sure that it is relevant.

Second, we're going to target user intent. This means not just thinking about whether the page is relevant for the keyword, but thinking about, "What does the user want when he gets to this page?" If I am searching for heat-retardant oven mitts, I probably want a bunch of information about why it's heat retardant, what it's made from, explaining to me what kind of temperatures it can handle. I want to know information about where I can buy these magical oven mitts, what the sources are, what the different brands are. I'd like to be able to filter on that data. Maybe I even want tutorials and demos on like, oh, well, this is the kinds of things that you could cook with them. Cool.

Then you can think about yourself, about conversion goals. So you make them happy and they'll make you happy. The conversion goal can be we want them to sign up for an email, we want them to click on a button, we want them to add this to their cart, we want them to convert out of the store. Great. Whatever that is, fine, super.

Then we have step two and a half, which is sort of an interim here. The reason we've got it is because a lot of the times when you're mapping keywords to content, it is not a 1:1 ratio. This again can make for Frankenpages unless you're careful. So, you want to be selecting is this a multiple or a singular keyword page focus. Meaning for the oven mitts, for just that broad keyword phrase, I might suggest, in fact, I'd probably be very strongly suggesting to a business owner who has a website about oven mitts, that that should be one page in and of itself. We should not try to make this a multiple keyword targeting page because we don't know what the user intent is. Someone who has that broad of a phrase is going to need to do a lot of research and discover whether they want heat retardant ones or they want ones for grills or pit fires, or they're looking for a certain material, they want it to withstand certain temperatures, they're looking for kid-friendly gloves, they want gloves for certain sizes, they want gloves with fingers on them or gloves that are just the classic mitt form. Whatever that is, we need to be providing them with a ton of different sorts of data. So, this page is going to have all sorts of selections and things. That has to map to A, B, and C here, or we're going to lose out and that's why I wouldn't try to get a bunch of different phrases ranking for this.

You could conceivably, maybe it's possible that you would have a page for oven mitts and oven gloves and target both on the same one. So oven mitts and gloves could be a page title, could be the target. But I don't know. I think gloves specifies fingers and mitts specifies just like this, and then they're the hybrid ones that has the one finger. I don't know where those go. Kitchen people will figure that out. Don't worry.

Then you have things like, oh, well, this page, oven mitts for kids, that can target lots of keywords like child-friendly oven mitts or kid-friendly oven mitts or children's sizes, oven mitts in children's sizes. So you take the user intent and the relevance of the keyword and you add those onto the page and then you can figure out what are all the pages that the kid- friendly one should target. We'll make the most important ones in the title. We'll put maybe the secondary ones in the body content. We'll try and make that page work for that combination because we don't want to build one that's child friendly and one that's kid friendly when they are exactly the same page just to be able to target different keywords. That generally makes no sense, because again, the link equity gets split up and Google does a lot of things with topic modeling anyway to figure out that those two are probably really similar. So that doesn't make good sense. We can do this. So I'll draw a tiny little oven glove right there. Oh adorable, for kids.

Then you have high-temperature oven mitts. These are, oh, they're big and strong. They can handle a bunch of high temperatures. Oh, look at all that heat they can take. The high-temperature oven mitts could be ones that include phrases like heat resistant, heat retardant, for advanced chefs, for foodies, whatever it is. Those high-temperature oven gloves, they can target a bunch of phrases as well, but we have to go back to relevance and user intent for those.

Then finally, maybe we'll have something in the longer tail, like pit fire mitts or pit fire gloves, and those for people who need to dig around in coals or who are doing the fancy smoking in a backyard barbecue. Whatever it is. Professional grade stuff. Fine. Cool. I don't know. I'll put a hammer there to indicate they're, like, hardcore professionals. I'm not sure why.

Once you have done this process, you can then take the map of keywords that you created to content and actually go build that content to make searchers happy. This works so much better than the Frankenpage approach. I can't even describe to you how well this will work. It doesn't have to be right from the start. You can take an existing site right now, run through this process, and have just a huge win both in terms of your ability to target searches and rank for those keywords as well as your ability to better convert those visitors because of how you've targeted the relevance and the user intent.

I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care.

79 Comments

This should be the simple defacto approach when it comes to SEO for websites. However, whether working in-house or as consultant its often quite a challenge to convince the higher ups that the SEO should be leading from the front. I've found one thing that works for me and that is to sell yourself (your services actually) as a web strategist. Then everybody seems to get it!

So true. I've worked in companies where there's a huge ongoing battle between sales marketing and SEO because they're often polar opposites when it comes to content (succinct, short as possible vs. quality content with key words and phrases and so on). It can be a tough one.

Ive come accross this countless times with big business, but the way to help higher ups is education, you need to be smart with times becuase you may need to get key points accross in 3 slides to seniors. You need to do training and show the benefits of SEO/ content ect. I have worked with some of the largest companys in Retail and Telco, its takes a while to get the message accross yet once you are able to get your message accross to all levels it is so worth it and the benefit for all is second to none.

Great WBF! I am fortunate to be a part of a team where we are both writers and SEOs and I have dealt with companies that have had other writers and have had us solely as SEOs, it doesn't really work. I appreciate your thoughts in mapping out content strategy and find them helpful.

To umtmedia, I respectfully disagree with your lack of love for this WBF. Perhaps it isn't the most earth shattering WBF yet, but it certainly has great value and is relevant to everyone, those that are just starting out and those that have been here for a while. I think SEOmoz does a fantastic job of switching it up, having WBFs that are more advanced and techinical for the more seasoned SEO, while also having WBFs that are catered towards the newbies. Anyway, I find it a little comical that you dissed this WBF immediately after asking questions about it. I say this respectfully and am simply sharing my opinion as you shared yours.

I was getting all opinionated about the title of your post which I believe should be "Mapping Content to Keywords" rather than "Mapping Keywords to Content" until I saw the content of the video. It seems we're actually very much on the same page.

But I must ask if you still stand by your SEO Pyramid having Quality Content as the foundation step? I've always felt that it would be far better with Keyword Research as the first step so that you can take an holistic approach to planning your site's content based on the big picture. By doing so I believe you have a far better chance of avoiding those dreaded Frakenpages or alternately cannibalizing your efforts with too many pages chasing the same keywords.

It's so difficult when the business/content creator is overly focused on what they want to say, and not thinking about what people might actually be interested in. Using keyword research to understand your audience and going beyond just traffic vs difficulty can make a significant difference.

"Who are you building this content for?"

Trouble is, all too often we're brought in way after the fact to try and unravel not just franken-pages, but who franken-sites!

I couldn't agree more with what you said about tactical SEO vs. strategic SEO. One of the biggest challenges I've faced as an in-house SEO is staying on top of new content in a rapidly growing organization. In order to be a part of the strategic level of planning, it's important to take the time to communicate the value you bring to the organization to key stakeholders. It doesn't end there, however. Nurturing those relationships is equally important to become a permanent part of the planning process.

In my journey to learn SEO (all 6 month of it), I have gone through the stages you have highlighted here.

In the first stage we just wrote content and added it to our website – not very successful.

In the next step, we did some keyword research and modify the content to target keyword words and phrases – better results.

Now we doing keyword research up front, choosing words and phrases which are realistic, then writing/rewriting content based on these terms with clear calls to action. We are seeing a steady rise in the rankings of these pages, with several appearing with the top 5.

"Now we doing keyword research up front, choosing words and phrases which are realistic, then writing/rewriting content based on these terms with clear calls to action. We are seeing a steady rise in the rankings of these pages, with several appearing with the top 5"

This is a good strategy. Of course there is a lot more to SEO, but this type of effort should be at the core of every good SEO campaign.

Sadly, the most of the times a SEO expert is hired, he/she finds an already built website, so, the option of making keyword mapping before content creation is a bit difficult, mainly because the biz owner doesn't want to change (again) his/her website. Moreover, even some of these biz owner are reluctant to make minimal variations of their contents, so we have to face with a big deal.

The ideal client is this who has a clear vision of what he/she wants is able to accept all the advices that come from a SEO expert, no matter what it means.

maybe you can talk to web designers in your enviroment and offer to them a partnership. Many of my web design customers want just a web design until I offer them seo services as well. 50-70% say yes then. So you could work with the web designer form the beginning.

Actually you can start with me because I need a good SEO for the English market (I do only German market). So what is your offer and what would you give me if I forward a customer to you?

Thankfully by exclusively working with small/medium businesses all the owners I work with accept and agree to the fact that I need to make changes to their content or even add or change entire pages to ensure good SEO rankings. Once I explain it to them they understand and accept it and usually give me free reign over their site and probably why I wouldn't want to work with larger companies.

Another excellent WBF by Rand. It gets me thinking again about in-house roles, as in a Content Team and a Search Team, or a Combined Team headed by a Digital Content & Search Manager that has the experience in both fields to set & manage the strategy. Perhaps this hybrid type team instead of content and search in seperate silos would work really well.

Love the concept of the 'Frankenpage' by the way, have used it in conversation already today :-)

I have a question. With regards to these new pages that you build, do the URLs of these new pages need to be accessible from: 1. The main navigational structure and/or 2. a LINK in the footer of the entire website? So you now have 4 separate pages instead of 1 for a MAIN keyword phrase. How do you provide access to these new pages? I'm not just talking about having Adwords send the PPC clicker to the page. Should these new page URLS be included in the HEADER, NAV STRUCTURE or FOOTER too?

What I like about this approach as well, Rand, is that you are increasing the footprint of the overall website property. This in turn of course helps with the overall reach you get, *and* more opportunities for those targeted searches you are looking for!

Anyway, yes, I completely agree. There are so many business owners out there that have a hard time taking off their "business owner hat," so they just assume that in order to get what they want and "win" they have to bulldozer the SEO into doing exactly what they want.

As SEOs, we need to put our foot down. For me personally, I give them an altimatem and ask them if they want to actually get more customers, or if they want to do it their way. If the latter, then they're welcome to give it a whirl themselves. If not, then they need to TRUST me and my professional opinion, that's why they hired me in the first place.

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Each page is its own unique entity and the content and purpose of that page creates how powerful it is. Each element of the page (minus the meta keywords) needs to reflect the pages target.

I think it is better to really explain to your customer why you do the things you do in a way that a non professional understands. I never had this problem to force my authority upon the costumer so I never had to play the TRUST card.

Another great video from Rand, and more great advice! I would say however that IMO LSI doesn't seem to have been considered. For example, in this scenario the top level 'oven mitts' page would only target that sole KW, if your backlink strategy and on-page signals refer to this one KW only would that look natural? Surely by targeting both 'oven mits' and 'heat resistant oven mits' on the one page would improve LSI relevancy!?

I understand that the 'user intent' factor may be compromised here, however if you provided a brief overview of each mit type on this page you can then link through to the most relevant pages, this will in turn improve your usability metrics and therefore your SEO visibility.

Great way to describe the real world of a SEO and how these terrible pages come to the web. the term "FrankenPage" was new for me and I will introduce this metafor to Europe for you Rand if you don't mind.

With my agency we always talk about webstrategy as a whole. So we take the proces like it should be, weither we come in before the website is being build or after. Putting it like a "webstrategy" CEO's an CFO's get it that way and approve ;-)

So good to see that SEO-life is the same all over the world and another great WF to share with my followers.

I can relate to the traditional KW-targeting workflow as you describe it.

I can imagine that at least nowdays in the "traditional process" of KW-targeting, step 1, 2A (hopefully) and 2.5 are somewhat kept in mind. What I like with the better process, are that you highlight the importance in Step 2. To think of users intent and conversion goals that makes the 2.5-process a very important and natural step and therefor also to build content with relevance and make the searches happy.

However, I think one of the big challange is to explain and convince the BIZ Owner / client on what to focus on and restrict them to what's possible and to avoid the frankenpage-result. Too much pressure from the client (and other circumstance...) and not convincing guidance from you will maybe make the process more like the Frankenpage-result. In the end, it's up to you to convince what's the best practice for the client SEO and not the client itself.

Well, we've always taken the "one CORE keyword phrase per page" philosophy and then let the content that naturally surrounds the subject that the core keyword is focussing on to drive the longer tail. GA landing page data then lets us know what else we have on the hook and then we can determine whether we tweak to capture more with that page or decide that we need a bigger hook/net ie a new content page.

As for getting round the... "No, no, no, no, no. I already have a page. I just want it to rank for oven mitts." Well, okay. Let's choose the best page you've got for oven mitts and we'll try to make that one rank better. The business owner is like, "All right. All right. Good job. Good job. I appreciate that. You did good work. Now I want to rank well for heat retardant oven mitts." The SEO is like, "Well, okay. You know what? We can modify that page again and target that particular phrase."...problem, we use the good old...

site:www.clientdomain.com keyword

...to demonstrate to clients which pages are best for which of the group of "core" keyword phrases to be targeted, working our way down the recommended keyword list - if a page turns up twice then we just select the next most relevant page...and of course, if no page shows up, then that becomes the trigger for "we're going to need a new page for that keyword phrase"...and it all starts to make sense to the client.

Walk a client through this process from the beginning and they will start to "get it" and will start actually driving new content to target specific keyword phrases...and then the way forward becomes so much easier - virtually sefl fulfilling...and not a Frankenpage in sight... :-)

I have been using this strategy for years and it has worked very well. In the case of "Oven Mitts" being broad, that can be a category or subcategory page. If the who website was only about "Oven Mitts", then that would be a home page. Most likely a well built website would have the home page about "Kitchen Accessories" and then have "Oven Mitts" as either the category page & subcategory page. But I wouldn't make it as a product page because it is too broad.

Some really good points with this WBF but some points are contradicting other offical seomoz posts. I know the industry is changing a lot and maybe a list should be onlien on seomoz with how ,who and what changed the border over time from one side to another...

This makes a lot of sense. We are just now really getting into SEO with the great info here on SEOMoz. We are structuring all of our new content roll out and SERP to go hand and hand. I broke out the white board today to start the mapping process.

Obviously in the ideal world you would have a single page for a "topic" and that page would serve all of the possible keyword variations (like you said around 7:10). But what if this is something that has been there for years.. would you just pick a page and 301 redirect all the variation pages to the new 'topic' page?

This is my exact approach at my company. Since I'm able to be more intimately involved with the content, I ensure that we both align current content to keywords, and build new content for keywords that we don't already clearly cover. The part about "user intent" is the real key. With each keyword, we need to search for it ourselves, see what the offerings are, decide what the user is really looking for, and ensure that the content we provide meets the exact expectations of the user. Only then will you gain the user's trust to the point that they would even consider making a conversion. When it comes down to it, this is what search engines want anyway. It all goes back to writing for the user and not the search engine. Great post.

Rand, this is a great component to your previous WBF breaking down a monthly plan for ongoing SEO strategies. Falls right under monthly audits for keyword & content opportunities. Keeping up with search trends and "mapping those keywords to your content" sounds like a smart idea for increasing conversions..

Thank you so much for this. With so much info available, sometimes it's easy to skip over the most important and easiest steps. I was getting a little exhausted with trying to work on our SEO but I am feeling refreshed after this. You reminded me to start at square one and forget about what's already on the website, but build from the beginning. Thank you thank you thank you!

Hi Rand and everyone else,great post, really!I have one question though: What happens with very competitive keywords like lets say "HP Laptop" and "HP Laptops"? Obviously everyone would like to rank for both of them, but I feel achieving this with a single page will be tough.Do you think that even in my example its not recommendable to use two pages, even though the content (products) might be the same? If someone would like to see a "live" example of the page and let me know what he thinks, please pm me.

PanchoVillazon - In my experience the intent is different with singular vs. plural, so the content should be different as well. People searching for plurals are looking to compare, while singulars are looking for a specific thing. That's the only conclusion I can draw from the research I've done on one of the sites I work with, anyway.

From my experience the success of SEO depends heavily on a steady stream of new and optimized content being published on the site. Considering this, it's ideal to have an SEO at least involved in the content strategy, driving the keyword strategy, and of course continually mapping and remapping keywords to content. I.e. when you find a new untapped keyword, instead of slapping it on content with little topical relevancy, you recommend that content be developed to support the keyword!

In working w/ a completely new site (like I am now), it seems like the keyword list factors should be these: easiest to rank for and most relevant to the content strategy of the site, right? Or am I missing something?

I'm thinking this is the case since a new site won't necessarily have any converting keywords at its inception...

oh snap... Frankenpage! lolMapping the keywords to specific content pages makes the site better all around. If the page is more relevant to the search, users will find it more useful! I can't agree more with you regarding tactical SEO vs. strategic SEO!

this is really helpful as we are going through a site redesign! as someone relatively new to SEO, i have always wondered about how to prevent "Frankenpages" from happening. Also good to hear that wou would group similiar keywords into one page based relevance. i had heard that each page should target 1 specific keyword before, but that just seemed like a crazy approach to have a "kid's oven mitts" page and then another page called "children's oven mitts". thanks for your great content!

Yes, that is definitely a crazy approach. I typically shoot for a master keyphrase for each page (the one I think will dirve the most traffic), followed by several semantic variations and otherwise relevant keyphrases in support. A page with "children's oven mitts" and "kid's over mitts" is a good example of that.

I have suffered the situation of generating frankestien pages (even after taking full care of my SEO process) in my early seo career. I wish I could have got this better approach of keywords mapping in those days.. but thanks to WBF now , I have got solid ways to follow in order to target the keywords with the relevant contents without being fell into the situation of generating frankestein pages.... Thanks Rand for the detailed step by step process for maximum keyword impact with perfect relevant contents without wasting extra ATP's to make changes again and again.....

By the way.. Why did you specify the third step as 2.5, please reply for it!!

I just have a little doubt about long tail keywords, suppose I have a site where the keyword that the users search cannot be exacly matched in the text, it just not fit well in a phrase without a proposition, conjunction ou whatever. There are any words that I can put between my composed keyword without loss relevance?

Great WBF as usual .. and the Frankenpage made me laugh. Having done with the laughing though I got the impression that some of my previous work were very very wrong .... sadly! But this WBF instead gave me a lot of new energy and courage because the new projects i am working follow exactly the rules the Rand explained so well. That is just great. Thank you

To my experiance, when dealing with clients (or employers) who create pages before SEOs and then not willing to change them, a blog that is deeply embedde withing a website at the root directory works the best.

Holy Crap Rand, I've tried to explain this process with clients and have had limited success. I feel like I now have something to turn to that will help me explain it in a visual way. I love it when you do things that can make my life easier. Kudos.

I enjoyed this post quite a bit! It surprises me how many people in the comments talk about being forced into creating "Franken pages." Say no to these projects, people! If you say yes to the right projects and do the work that needs to be done, you'll never be at a loss for work.

If you work for an agency or in-house and you're forced to do this, go to a few networking events and you'll be bound to find folks looking for an SEO. I don't know about nationally, but demand for SEO talent in Minneapolis/St. Paul is through the roof.

Am glad I don't work with clients! What I do when creating content is to have in mind the main keywords I'm targetting, but apart from making sure I mention them once naturally, I concentrate on having as complete an article as possible - so lots of research and the article is long (though I try to use clear simple english so that it is easy to read).

That's it - if you cover your subject using natural language, you'll get found for pretty much all the long tails, and you won't have to force words or phrases anywhere.

Can I just say, I love that shirt Rand ...where is it from? Rather fetching :) On a more serious note, completely agree with subcategories per product and I've found that strengthens product categories/broad terms when you comprehensively cover ever facet of that term

Great post, illustrates how tactical keyword research and content mapping can get. The challenge, and what separates good SEO's is being able to communicate this to the client and not get too scattered with all the opportunitiees this type of process produces.

I have been trying to generate some traffic and leads from my (property) website.

I wrote the website based on some keywords I thought would work originally then hired some SEO consultant to do link building eventually ending up in the first category tweeking again and again my pages and keywords selection.

I think I may have created Frankentein (homepage) pages!

I do understand that I should change my strategy and move to the better process but how do you do that when you have already invested a lot of time in creating contents for my website.

Should I just create new pages based on the new process output and forget about what I orginally created?

Thanks for an another great WBF, really a great and informative stuff. Right keyword trageting is really an important aspect of SEO to grab the attention the of your potential audience. Your this session will help us to identify and target keywords that really work for us.

A hot topic at the moment seems to be infographics. If create an infographic on oven mitts that is so great that people decide to link to it like crazy with the following anchors:

Oven mitts

Oven gloves

Silicone oven mitts

Heat resistant oven mitts

Ect

Essentially I do not even need to target any keywords.

I think this WBF is flawed and is not the kind of quality that I would expect from a site like SEOmoz.

It's all well and good if you are targeting newbie’s that creates micro niche sites with domains such as ovenmitters.com but I personally am here to learn from the experts, not to watch videos like this.

I mean no disrespect to you Rand. I am being blatantly honest with you and I hope that you can appreciate that.

I would love to see you creating videos that have that WOW factor, I know you can do it.

I think that you are missing the point of the video, which is understanding what the user is looking for and delivering it to them on the landing page.

In your example, you make an infographic about oven mitts which is so great that now it ranks for all sorts of oven mitt related terms. So now when someone searches "silicone oven mitts," they land on your inforgraphic. Is that really the best page for that search? There may be some scenarios where one landing page can fulfill many needs, but in this case I think you would see more conversions by directing that searcher to a page that sells silicone oven mitts, since they have already indicated that that is what they are looking for.

A better strategy is to use the infographic to build up domain strength as well as using the inforgraphic page to deep link to other pages on your site. At the same time, you should be using on-page optimization to tell Google which page on your site is best for "silicone oven mitts" and which is best for "heat resistant oven mitts" so that users are landing on the page which is most likely to convert.

but people would be linking through the anchor "silicone oven mitts" why would they do that if it wasn't about that?

Creating a page just about "oven mitts" may not be as beneficial as creating a page about oven mitts, the types of oven mitts, different coulors, sizes, which ones offer the most heat resistant.

just look at wikipedia and the first example that I showed.

It should always be about the quality of the content, it should not be about this page has it in the H1, this page has it 8 times in the body. While it's great to have onpage factors in mind it's ultimatley about the content and how much people like the content, thats whats going to gain you links and thats whats going to gain you authority.

Rand know this perfectly well.

conclusion: build quality content that attracts quality links.

Rand you asked me to comment right, well here I am buddy. We don't have to agree with each other but at least you can see my point.